Ontogeny recapitulated phylogeny: The ontogeny of manipulation complexity within 26 primate species

Studying the ontogeny of complex food
manipulations within and across primate species has important consequences for
our understanding of the level of phenotypic plasticity, the underlying
cognitive abilities, and the emergence of tool-use in humans. In a previous
study, we categorized and empirically validated manipulation complexity in
food-related contexts in 37 primate species. In this talk, I will present some
recent work showing that the order of the complexity scale assigned in the
previous study matches the order of emergence of these manipulation categories
during ontogeny.